Chapter 1: What is Natural Law?
“Natural law is the highest law, and it would be a folly to figure that you can outwit natural law.” ~ Winona La Duke
Natural law is the logical consequence for any and all actions. All great religions and philosophies embrace this tenant at least to a point. It’s as basic as if you hit your thumb with a hammer hard it is going to hurt. There are no exceptions unless you have a numb thumb. Natural law holds no exceptions.
Things
I broke the cane I had been using the other day when I shut the car door upon it. It was a very interesting piece of wood with a hook on it. What made it even more special was I believe it belonged to one of my grandfathers. At first I thought it was maternal one, because my mother gave it to me and him being a man of the wild would have better access to such a piece. But I didn’t remember him ever using one. However in my distant past, I do remember my father’s father using one to leave the plumbing shop and walk across the backyard to is adjoining house.
I had recently had a health problem which made me facilitate it’s use in my everyday life and I had become attached to it. In the parking lot of Wegman’s, my partner, warned me to watch out for the car next to ours as I opened the door and startled slammed the door on the end of it. My first instinct was to blame her, which despite my years and supposed wisdom, often do blame others for my own lack of awareness. I pouted for a while.
Looking forward perhaps this was a sign that I would no longer need to have an aid to walk in the near future. Sometimes I have experienced difficulty in letting go of things that have acquired a special meaning in my life. But ‘things’ are made with the intention to serve us. If we use them for their purpose and use them well, if we wear them out, break them or lose them, it just means it is time to say good-bye to them, even the special ones. In the scheme of things, they are probably less important than the ants with which we are currently waging war with in the kitchen.
It’s tragic when we think of things owning us, but they tend to do so fairly regularly. I can think of many examples in my everyday life, even though I try not to put the word ‘my’ before any of them. The other day I was talking to my artist friend, Candy, about her art. She is a creative genius, so saying she has been creating for a long time and therefore has accumulated a great treasure trove of it. She said if she had a fire and lost it all, she was thinking she could probably move on. If she had to destroy it on purpose though it would be exceedingly difficult and probably couldn’t even think of doing such a thing.
The only things that are really ours is our body, mind and relationship with our surroundings and those are the ‘things’ we should embrace. Too often we’re lulled into the act of buying just for buying’s sake. We purchase many things we don’t need, that often end up collecting dust. Just more stuff we have to take care of or get rid of later on. Whenever we attach the word mine on to something, it owns us instead of the other way around.
I was concerned about the act of creating this, technically my blog, which would make me the servant, one more thing to do. My only hope is that by doing so, I can begin a dialog, which eventually will resolve in an understanding of the way the universe functions and how we can better exist within the confines of natural law.
WE DO NOT OWN ‘THINGS,’ THEY OWN US.
